Legacy Friday continues its recognition of the leaders currently entrusted with carrying CPOF’s mission forward. This week, we recognize Vice-Chair Kim Potter-Blair—a Correctional Officer who rose to statewide executive leadership, a longtime advocate for reentry and professional development, the first woman elected CPOF Vice-Chair, and a leader whose understanding of “Taking Care of Our Own” reaches far beyond her title.
Some people understand service as a professional responsibility.
Kim Potter-Blair understands it as something deeply personal.
Her career has taken her from the grounds of a correctional institution to probation and parole, community reentry, statewide administration and executive leadership within the Kentucky Department of Corrections.
Her service to CPOF has taken her from witnessing PROJECT 2000 for the first time to helping lead the Foundation and standing before correctional professionals who survived serious assaults.
Her commitment to family led her to make the most personal gift imaginable: donating a kidney to her husband, Myron, after years of living with his kidney disease.
Across every chapter, the same principle has remained visible.
When someone needs help, leadership asks a simple question:
How can we help?
Beginning at Blackburn
Kim began her career with the Kentucky Department of Corrections on February 1, 1998, as a Correctional Officer at Blackburn Correctional Complex.
Blackburn is where Kim first learned the realities of the correctional profession from the front line.
Correctional Officers are responsible for far more than maintaining order. They must learn to communicate effectively, recognize subtle changes in behavior, respond to emergencies and make sound decisions in an environment where circumstances can change without warning.
The work requires authority and vigilance.
It also requires patience, judgment and an understanding of people.
Kim soon promoted to Classification and Treatment Officer at Blackburn, beginning a career path that would ultimately give her experience across nearly every part of Kentucky’s correctional system.
Her transition from custody into classification and treatment expanded her understanding of corrections.
Safety remained essential, but so did accurate assessment, case planning, documentation and preparing people for what would come next.
Kim’s career would continue moving outward—from the institution to the community, from managing individual cases to developing systems and eventually from implementing policy to helping direct the Department.
From the Institution to the Community
In December 1999, Kim transferred to the Division of Probation and Parole’s District 9 in Lexington as a Probation and Parole Officer.
District 9 encompasses Fayette County and carries the responsibility of supervising people living within the community while ensuring compliance with the conditions established by the courts and Parole Board.
Probation and parole work demands a careful balance.
Officers must protect public safety, enforce accountability and respond when conditions are violated. At the same time, they must connect people with treatment, employment, housing and other resources that can reduce the likelihood of returning to incarceration.
The work takes place outside secure prison walls, often with fewer immediate safeguards and less public recognition.
Kim supervised a caseload for approximately four years before promoting to Assistant District Supervisor in 2003 and District Supervisor in 2005.
During her time in District 9, she helped improve the flow of court work within the Fayette Circuit Court system.
She was also instrumental in creating the Fayette County Reentry Program for people on probation and parole and served on a committee focused on helping incarcerated individuals return successfully to their communities.
This work reflected an understanding that public safety does not end when someone leaves an institution.
Successful reentry requires preparation, structure and cooperation among corrections, courts, treatment providers, community organizations and families.
Kim helped bring those pieces together.
Building Pathways for Reentry
Reentry work requires leaders who can see beyond a single point in the correctional process.
An institution may prepare someone for release.
Probation and parole may supervise them afterward.
Community programs may provide treatment, housing or employment assistance.
Courts may establish conditions and respond to violations.
Each part affects the others.
Kim’s experience inside an institution and later in community supervision gave her a broad understanding of that continuum.
She knew the pressures faced by Correctional Officers because she had performed the job.
She understood classification and treatment because she had worked directly within those systems.
She knew the responsibilities carried by Probation and Parole Officers because she had supervised a caseload.
As a District Supervisor, she understood the administrative and community partnerships required to help those systems function together.
This perspective would become increasingly valuable as her responsibilities grew.
Statewide Executive Leadership
In April 2008, Kim was appointed Deputy Commissioner of Support Services for the Kentucky Department of Corrections.
The promotion came only 10 years after she entered the Department as a Correctional Officer.
From 2008 through 2017, Kim oversaw major divisions and services that supported Kentucky’s correctional system, including Probation and Parole, Administrative Services, Offender Information Services, Parole Board Services and Training.
The scope of that responsibility was substantial.
Probation and Parole supervised individuals throughout the state.
Administrative Services supported the Department’s financial and operational needs.
Offender Information Services helped maintain the records upon which countless decisions depended.
Parole Board Services supported processes with direct consequences for public safety and individual liberty.
Training helped prepare employees to perform demanding jobs safely, legally and professionally.
Leading across those areas required more than knowledge of one division.
It required the ability to connect different parts of the Department, recognize their shared needs and build systems capable of supporting both employees and the public.
Kim brought her firsthand correctional experience into executive leadership.
She had not entered administration without knowing the work carried out beneath it.
She had performed that work herself.
Preparing and Mentoring Other Leaders
Kim continued developing her own leadership while investing in the development of others.
She graduated from the inaugural class of the Commissioner’s Executive Leadership Program, which began in 2005, and received the Commissioner’s Award in 2006.
She also participated in the National Institute of Corrections Executive Forum for Deputy Directors and Executive Leadership for Women.
Kim is a member of the Association of Women Executives in Corrections and served as a mentor to two women participating in the Governor’s Minority Management Training Program during 2018 and 2019.
Mentorship is a particularly important part of leadership in corrections.
A promotion can give someone authority.
A mentor helps them understand how to carry it.
Mentors provide perspective, answer questions that may be difficult to ask publicly and help emerging leaders understand that they do not have to abandon their identity or values to succeed.
As a Black woman advancing through custody, probation and parole, and statewide executive leadership, Kim’s presence also carried significance beyond her individual accomplishments.
She demonstrated what was possible.
By mentoring other women and participating in leadership-development programs, she helped make those possibilities more visible and accessible to those coming after her.
Leadership Through Education
Kim’s commitment to developing others extended into the classroom.
She served as an adjunct professor at Eastern Kentucky University and Kentucky State University, teaching and helping students connect academic theory with the realities of public administration and criminal justice.
Teaching requires a different expression of leadership.
Instead of directing an agency or supervising employees, an instructor must help students develop their own judgment, understand complex systems and prepare to enter professions that carry significant responsibility.
Kim brought practical experience into those classrooms.
She understood corrections at the institutional, community and executive levels. She could explain not only how policies were intended to work, but how they affected employees, courts, communities and individuals navigating the justice system.
That ability to connect policy with people would also become central to her CPOF leadership.
Her Introduction to CPOF
Kim was introduced to the Correctional Peace Officers Foundation after becoming Deputy Commissioner.
By then, CPOF had already assisted Kentucky Department of Corrections employees and families during catastrophic events.
Kim saw the Foundation respond with a question that captured its entire purpose:
“How can we help?”
CPOF did not begin by asking whether helping would be easy.
It did not ask whether the family’s need fit neatly within a public-relations opportunity.
It asked what could be done.
In June 2008, Kim and then-Commissioner LaDonna Thompson attended CPOF’s four-day annual memorial gathering in Washington, D.C.
There, Kim witnessed correctional professionals from across the United States and Canada surrounding the spouses, children, parents and other loved ones of staff who died in the line of duty.
She saw the camaraderie among people who worked in different systems, wore different uniforms and came from different parts of the country.
They were united by a shared understanding.
A correctional professional had been lost.
A family remained.
That family would not stand alone.
Kim later wrote that it was during that PROJECT that she knew she wanted to become part of CPOF.
A Commitment to Kentucky
Kim’s first experience at PROJECT gave her a national view of CPOF’s mission, but it also showed her how much work remained within Kentucky.
When she joined CPOF’s Board, she recognized that the number of supporting members remained small compared with the total number of correctional employees who could benefit from knowing the Foundation.
She understood that assistance depends upon awareness.
Correctional professionals cannot turn to an organization they do not know exists.
Facilities cannot refer staff if their leaders do not understand the programs available.
A national Foundation cannot feel personal without trusted people carrying its message into local institutions and offices.
Kim credited Kentucky Field Representative Wayne Bowdry for attending Kentucky Council on Crime and Delinquency conferences, visiting institutions and demonstrating the persistence needed to build those connections.
She also understood that the responsibility belonged to more than one representative.
It required correctional leaders, members and advocates throughout the state to share the mission.
Kim entered the Board prepared to help do that work.
Joining CPOF’s Board
In June 2015, Kim was elected to CPOF’s Board of Directors.
Her appointment gave the Foundation a leader with extensive experience across institutional custody, probation and parole, community reentry and statewide administration.
It also brought a perspective from Kentucky into an organization that had begun in California but was created to serve correctional professionals nationwide.
Kim joined a Board that still included several leaders closely connected to CPOF’s founding generation.
She served alongside Chairman Glenn Mueller, one of the Founding Five, as well as longtime leaders Ed Barcliff, Don Dease, Sal Osuna and Jim Brown.
This placed Kim within an important period in CPOF history.
She had the opportunity to learn from people who had built and expanded the Foundation while helping prepare it for a new generation of leadership.
In her introduction to CPOF members, Kim promised to support and represent the organization to the best of her ability.
More than a decade later, she continues fulfilling that promise.
When “Taking Care of Our Own” Became Personal
Kim’s belief in caring for others was tested in the most personal way within her own family.
In December 2008, her husband, Myron, called her with news that changed their lives.
He had been diagnosed with a rare kidney disease.
At the time, their sons, Chase and Aven, were still very young. What followed was nearly a decade of medical appointments, uncertainty and declining kidney function.
In 2016, Myron was placed on the national kidney-transplant list.
The family was told the wait for a kidney could last several years.
As his condition worsened, the need for a living donor became increasingly urgent. Family members and friends volunteered to be tested, but a successful match had not been found.
Kim eventually completed the living-donor process herself.
In June 2018, after returning home from CPOF’s national memorial gathering in Houston, she learned that Myron’s doctors were preparing to begin dialysis.
Kim submitted new testing and learned that she was compatible.
On August 14, the transplant team approved the surgery. The date carried another family meaning: it was their son Aven’s birthday.
On September 6, 2018, Kim donated one of her kidneys to Myron.
The transplant was successful.
Kim later shared their story in the Spring 2019 edition of CPO Family, describing the experience as “Taking Care of Our Own” in its most personal form.
The phrase was no longer only an organizational motto.
It described a gift of life from one member of a family to another.
A Gift That Revealed Her Character
Donating a kidney is an extraordinary act, but Kim did not present herself as extraordinary.
She wrote openly about fear, anxiety and the years spent trying to keep life normal for their children.
She acknowledged that completing the donor paperwork was frightening.
She described the difficult balance between hoping for a transplant and knowing that a deceased-donor organ would come from another family’s loss.
Her honesty gave the story its power.
Courage is not the absence of fear.
It is choosing to move forward when the stakes are deeply personal.
Kim’s decision reflected qualities visible throughout her career: commitment, steadiness, faith and a willingness to accept responsibility when someone she loved needed her.
The experience also gave her an even deeper understanding of the families CPOF assists.
Catastrophic medical events do not affect only the person receiving treatment.
They affect spouses, children, employment, travel, finances and the emotional stability of the entire household.
Kim had lived that uncertainty.
When she later considered requests for assistance or stood before families at PROJECT, she did so not only as an executive or Board member.
She understood what it meant for a family’s future to change after one phone call.
Community Service Beyond Corrections
Kim’s commitment to service extends beyond her professional roles.
She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, an organization with a longstanding emphasis on public service.
She has been active in the Kentucky Council on Crime and Delinquency and previously served as President of its Bluegrass Chapter.
Her involvement has also included the American Correctional Association, the Association of Women Executives in Corrections and Opportunity for Work and Learning.
Following the transplant, Kim served as an ambassador for Trust for Life, helping promote awareness of organ and tissue donation.
Each of these roles reflects a consistent pattern.
Kim does not view leadership as belonging to only one agency, Board or professional title.
She uses her experience in different spaces where education, mentorship, advocacy and community support can make a difference.
Chief of Staff
In 2020, Kim was named Chief of Staff for the Kentucky Department of Corrections.
As Chief of Staff, she supported the Commissioner and executive team while helping coordinate operations and priorities across the Department.
The position required an understanding of the entire agency.
Kim brought more than two decades of experience to the role—from working inside Blackburn Correctional Complex to supervising a probation and parole district and overseeing major statewide divisions.
She understood how decisions made in Central Office reached an institution, a field office, a courtroom or a community program.
Her appointment also came during an extraordinarily challenging period.
Correctional agencies nationwide were navigating the operational, staffing and health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Leadership required clear communication, adaptability and an ability to make consequential decisions in circumstances that changed rapidly.
Kim’s broad experience made her a valuable member of Kentucky DOC’s executive leadership team.
Returning to Deputy Commissioner
After serving as Chief of Staff from 2020 through 2024, Kim was appointed Deputy Commissioner of Community Services and Local Facilities.
In announcing the appointment, Commissioner Cookie Crews expressed confidence that Kim’s leadership would strengthen the Department’s service to Kentucky communities.
The role brings together divisions and responsibilities central to what happens beyond state-operated prison walls, including Probation and Parole, Local Facilities, Addiction Services and Reentry Services.
It is a fitting continuation of Kim’s career.
She began inside an institution.
She then supervised people living in the community.
She helped create a local reentry program.
She oversaw statewide support services.
She coordinated executive operations as Chief of Staff.
Now, she leads systems responsible for community supervision, county facilities, addiction treatment and successful transitions from incarceration.
Her career has come full circle—but at a statewide level.
Standing With Survivors
Within CPOF, Kim has become closely associated with one of PROJECT 2000’s most meaningful events: the Recognition Luncheon.
The luncheon honors correctional professionals who survived serious assaults, along with individuals who demonstrated bravery above and beyond the call of duty.
For many survivors, the physical attack ended long before PROJECT.
Its consequences did not.
They may continue through surgeries, rehabilitation, interrupted careers, post-traumatic stress and changes within their families.
Kim has spoken plainly about those realities.
Assaults should never be treated as simply part of the job.
Survivors should not have to minimize what happened to them because they work in a profession where danger is expected.
At the Recognition Luncheon, Kim helps tell their stories, present their awards and ensure that their courage is acknowledged by the larger correctional family.
Her presence is warm but authoritative.
She gives the event the seriousness it deserves without losing the humanity of the individuals being honored.
As she has reminded those gathered, the memorial ceremony honors those who gave everything.
The Recognition Luncheon honors those who are still carrying what happened to them.
From National Director to Secretary
During her years on the Board, Kim accepted increasing responsibilities within CPOF.
She served as a National Director before becoming Secretary of the Board.
As Secretary, she helped preserve the official record of the Foundation’s decisions and supported the governance required to keep a national nonprofit responsible and effective.
The work of a Board Secretary is often less visible than speaking at PROJECT or presenting an award.
It is nevertheless essential.
An organization that asks supporting members to trust it with their donations must document decisions carefully, follow established processes and preserve institutional continuity.
Kim brought the same attention to responsibility that had defined her public-service career.
She understood that compassion gives CPOF its purpose, while sound governance helps ensure that purpose can continue.
CPOF’s First Woman Vice-Chair
In October 2025, Kim was elected Vice-Chair of CPOF’s Board of Directors, becoming the first woman in the Foundation’s history to hold the position.
Her election came as Chevi Amrein became CPOF’s first woman Chairman.
Together, their appointments marked a historic change in the leadership of an organization founded by five male Correctional Officers in 1984.
Women had always been essential to CPOF.
They served on its staff, supported its founders, helped build PROJECT, worked with surviving families, volunteered, represented facilities and guided the Foundation through decades of service.
Chevi and Kim’s elections made that leadership visible in a new way at the highest levels of the Board.
For Kim, the appointment also reflected more than 10 years of Board service and nearly three decades in Kentucky corrections.
She had earned the position through experience, steady involvement and a demonstrated commitment to the people CPOF exists to serve.
Leadership Across Every Boundary
Kim’s career is remarkable not simply because of the titles she has held, but because of the boundaries it crosses.
She has worked inside an institution and throughout the community.
She has carried a caseload and overseen statewide divisions.
She has helped people reenter society and helped lead the agency responsible for supervising them.
She has taught university students and mentored emerging women leaders.
She has supported correctional families professionally and experienced catastrophic medical uncertainty personally.
She has represented Kentucky while helping govern a national Foundation.
These experiences allow Kim to see the correctional profession as a connected system.
Correctional Officers, treatment staff, probation and parole officers, administrative employees, trainers, local jail professionals and community-service providers may perform different work.
They remain part of the same professional family.
CPOF’s promise must be broad enough to recognize them all.
A Commitment Carried Home
At the conclusion of PROJECT, attendees return to different institutions, agencies and states.
The ceremonies end.
The uniforms are packed.
The meeting rooms empty.
But Kim has reminded those gathered that the commitment must travel home with them.
Honor the fallen.
Support the survivors.
Share CPOF with coworkers who may someday need it.
Recognize the correctional professionals whose sacrifices rarely receive public attention.
Build systems that treat people with dignity.
Prepare the next generation of leaders.
Take care of our own.
Those principles are reflected throughout Kim’s life.
She has practiced them as an officer, supervisor, Deputy Commissioner, mentor, educator, wife, mother and CPOF leader.
The Leader and the Servant
Today, we recognize Kim Potter-Blair:
A Correctional Officer who began her career at Blackburn Correctional Complex.
A Classification and Treatment Officer who understood that correctional work involves both security and preparation for change.
A Probation and Parole Officer who carried public-safety responsibilities into the community.
A District Supervisor who helped improve court processes and create pathways for reentry.
A Deputy Commissioner who led major divisions across Kentucky’s correctional system.
A Chief of Staff who helped coordinate statewide leadership during a period of extraordinary challenge.
An educator and mentor who invested in future professionals and women leaders.
A wife who gave her husband the gift of life.
A mother to Chase and Aven.
A CPOF National Director and Secretary who helped preserve the Foundation’s mission and governance.
The first woman elected Vice-Chair of CPOF’s Board of Directors.
A leader whose strength is matched by compassion.
Kim first witnessed CPOF’s mission at PROJECT 2000 in 2008.
She saw correctional professionals surround families experiencing unimaginable loss, and she knew she wanted to be part of it.
Since then, her understanding of the mission has only deepened.
She has helped families professionally.
She has endured uncertainty personally.
She has honored survivors publicly.
She has mentored future leaders quietly.
She has carried responsibility at nearly every level of corrections.
Through it all, Kim Potter-Blair has demonstrated that “Taking Care of Our Own” is not something we merely say.
It is something we choose to do.
Sometimes that choice is made in a Board room.
Sometimes it is made inside an institution or community office.
Sometimes it is made while standing beside a survivor.
And sometimes, it is made at home.
If you have worked with Kim, served beside her through Kentucky DOC or CPOF, attended PROJECT under her leadership or witnessed the compassion she brings to corrections and her community, we invite you to share your photographs and memories. These stories will help preserve a living legacy built through leadership, service and a deeply personal commitment to taking care of others.